We in Wellesley generally don’t go wanting for many material things, but an exception to that truism recently took place at Wellesley High School, which ran into a paper shortage.

Of course the trouble with tracking down this sort of story is that there is no paper trail.

But there were plenty of students talking about it and sharing about it on social media:

Wellesley high school ran out of paper #ThanksObama

— Maria Kelley (@mariake17) May 22, 2015

One student told me: “One of my teachers gave us a test on salmon-colored paper.”

Hmmm, fishy indeed.

We did hear that faculty, staff and students were being urged to conserve paper, which of course is never really a bad thing — especially with the watchful eyes of various local green teams upon us. We also heard that dwindling school supplies isn’t an unusual occurence, as pencils and other standard items can become hard to find by May/June.

But as for the mounting paper crisis, a notice in the WHS library put students on notice: welllesley library message on paper

Ironically, one reason paper usage might have spiked is that students receiving electronic documents from teachers are then printing them out at school. Then, there might also be those print-on-one-side-only miscreants.

The good news is that Wellesley High paper shortage was short-lived, according to WHS Principal Jamie Chisum.

“We had a moment a week ago where we were worried that the amount of paper we had wasn’t going to last us. We were able to make an adjustment and get an order of paper in on Tuesday that will more than last us through the end of the year,” he said. “The colored paper was and is also in plentiful supply, so that might be how some of the kids noticed it… We always need to be conscious of conserving all kinds of things here, so I hope that’s the takeaway.”

>Meanwhile, students, you won’t have the “but we’ve run out of paper excuse” to fall back on for any end-of-the-year projects.